1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated systems and methods for recommending items to users. More particularly, the invention relates to an automated peer-to-peer system and method for collaborative suggestions and propagation of media.
2. Description of Related Art
The prior art provides various systems for filtering, suggesting and rating of media content items. Common methods of suggesting and rating items occasionally employ collaborative filtering techniques, in which a user's preference profile is compared with profiles of similar users or groups of users. The co-pending application, K. Ali, W. Van Stam, “Intelligent system and methods of recommending media content items based on user preferences,” PCT Patent Application No. PCT/US00/33876 (Dec. 14, 2000) discusses several of these collaborative filtering implementations. In addition, J. Atcheson, J. Miller, “Method and apparatus for recommending selections based on preferences in a multi-user system,” U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,763 (Dec. 10, 1996) describe a system for determining selections that a user is likely to be interested in. A determination is made, based on a user's prior indicated preferences, designated in a preferences list. The list is compared with other users' lists. When a large number of matches is found between two lists, the unmatched entries of the other user's list are extracted. Typically, these implementations require a client-server network environment and a stateful connection between the client and the server. Correlations are calculated on the server, based on data periodically supplied by the client, necessitating monitoring of the client state, thereby raising confidentiality concerns. It would be desirable to provide a collaborative suggestion system in which a stateful connection between client and server is unnecessary, thus reducing concerns about user privacy.
The above-identified co-pending application, K. Ali, et al., supra, describes a distributed collaborative filtering engine that guarantees user privacy by eliminating the necessity of correlating the user to other user's or groups of users. Similarity is calculated on the client side, eliminating the necessity of a stateful connection between the server and the client. The described system, however, employs a client-server architecture in which information is exchanged only between client and server. It would be an advantage to provide a system for collaborative suggestion in a peer-to-peer environment, which makes opportunistic use of an existing network connection, wherein peers evaluate their similarity to one another.
Peer-to-peer file sharing systems are becoming increasingly common. For example, the “Gnutella Support Pages,” http://gnutella.wego.com (no date) describe a peer-to-peer network composed of a multiplicity of Gnutella clients, in which the client software includes an integrated search engine and file server. The Gnutella network changes constantly, according to the number of Gnutella clients that are on the network at any given time. No server exists, and the network infrastructure is provided by a publicly accessible network, such as the Internet. In order to access the Gnutella network, a user must have the network address of at least one other Gnutella client that is currently connected. A user in search of a particular information object, a digital music file, or a recipe, for example, may send a query over the network. The query is passed from client to client until the object is located or the query is terminated. While the Gnutella client allows the creation of a dynamic peer-to-peer network, and sharing of files between clients, the query process is user-initiated: queries are formulated and launched by the user with no automation of the query process. Additionally, the Gnutella network is primarily directed to file sharing, in which media content items are shared or propagated between users. There is no capability of comparing user profiles between clients in order to generate collaborative suggestions. Furthermore, the Gnutella network is concerned exclusively with the peer-to-peer network paradigm.
It would be a technological advance to provide a system for collaborative suggestions and media propagation that did not require a stateful connection between a client and server, thus safeguarding privacy of individual users. It would be a great advantage to implement such a system as a peer-to-peer based system that was capable of operating in parallel with client-server based suggestion systems, opportunistically employing the same network connection, wherein suggestions generated by both systems are presented in the same software interface. Furthermore, it would be desirable to automate the peer-to-peer system, so that clients could initiate and carry out interactions with each other without direction or intervention by a user.